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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/07/new-era-of-lies-mark-zuckerberg-meta-social-media>
"Social media has always acted as something of a funhouse mirror to society as
a whole. The algorithms and amplifications of an always-online existence have
helped accentuate the worst parts of our lives, while tucking in and hiding the
best. It’s part of why we’re so polarised today, with two tribes shouting past
one another on social media into a gaping chasm of hopelessness.
Which is what makes a declaration by one titan of big tech this week so
worrying. Abandon hope all ye who enter: less than two weeks before Donald
Trump returns to the White House for a second crack at the US presidency, Meta,
the parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Threads, has made major
changes to content moderation, and in doing so appears to align itself with the
views of the incoming president.
In a bizarre video message posted to his personal Facebook page on Tuesday,
Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, announced the platform is getting rid of its
third-party factcheckers, starting in the US. In their place? Mob rule.
Zuckerberg has said that the platform, which has more than 3 billion people
worldwide logging on to its apps every day, will be adopting an Elon Musk-style
community notes format for policing what is and isn’t acceptable speech on its
platforms. Starting in the US, the company will be dramatically shifting the
Overton window towards whoever can shout the loudest.
The Meta CEO all but admitted that the move was politically motivated. “It’s
time to get back to our roots around free expression,” he said, confessing that
“restrictions on topics like immigration and gender […] are out of touch with
mainstream discourse”. He admitted to past “censorship mistakes” – here,
probably meaning the past four years of tamping down political speech while a
Democratic president was in office – and said he would “work with President
Trump to push back against foreign governments going after American companies
to censor more”.
The most dog-whistle comment was a throwaway remark that Meta would be moving
what remained of its trust and safety and content moderation teams out of
liberal California and its US content moderation would now be based in
staunchly Republican Texas. All that was missing from the video was Zuckerberg
wearing a Maga hat and toting a shotgun.
To be clear: all businesspeople make shrewd moves to accommodate the political
weather. And there are few more violent storms than Hurricane Trump approaching
the US. But few people’s decisions matter more than Mark Zuckerberg’s."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
